I'm surprised Arch is that high compared to other distros.
Also interesting that people are actually switching to windows 11, everyone I know is staying on win10 as long as possible because they're more used to the interface.
One of the things that got me to change my gaming desktop from Mint to Arch was the fact that you get the cutting-edge version of everything; kernel and amdgpu being the most important, but also getting the latest version of Lutris and things is nice too. Brought me from "usually about 50 fps outdoors in Elden Ring" to "usually about 60 fps" on the same machine.
Makes sense for a gaming machine to only include the services you actually want, which Arch enables. Supports my hardware better too - my audio gear works perfectly in Pipewire but is ropey in ALSA, so rather than "install Mint -> install Pipewire -> remove ALSA -> hope ALSA is gone", the sequence is "install Arch -> install Pipewire", which make more sense.
Other cutting-edge rolling release distros are available, of course, but once you learn Arch, it makes a lot of sense for gaming.
Don't forget the AUR. It's so much easier to use yay than it is to go to GitHub to manually check for updates/download/install a deb or rpm file.
AUR is reposnsible for the vast majority of -Syu into softbricks, and is little better than downloading random binaries (because you literally are most of the time)
That's what timeshift and btrfs is for! Really though it takes like ten seconds to roll back and each snapshot only takes like 40mb. There's a pacman hook to take a snapshot before updating.
AUR is just incredibly convenient for me. I don't have to think about it, I don't have to track anything down.
I so very much hope that the Linux gaming effect increases. Not only for gaming, but for the productivity world. If development of these 'compatibility layers' (Wikipedia) like Proton, Wine improves and maybe win-native software (thinking of CAD in particular) can be made working reliably on Linux using these packages, one or the other big player might adapt. That would be a much cheaper way of expanding the software's range than developing and maintaining a native Linux port...
... and maybe I am too naive.
